Climate change confronts humanity with a challenge it has never faced before. It combines issues of global justice and intergenerational justice on an unprecedented scale. In particular, it stands to ...
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Climate change confronts humanity with a challenge it has never faced before. It combines issues of global justice and intergenerational justice on an unprecedented scale. In particular, it stands to adversely affect the global poor. So far, the global community has failed to reduce emissions to levels that are necessary to avoid unacceptable risks for the future. Nor are the burdens of emission reductions and of coping with climate impacts fairly shared. The shortcomings of both political and individual climate action thus seem like a paradigmatic case for non-ideal theory. Non-ideal theory can be understood as a form of political theorizing that compares different responses to (i) failures of agents to comply with the demands of justice and (ii) unfavourable circumstances. Insofar as non-ideal theory also aims to be action-guiding, it asks normative theorists for a more thorough engagement with the empirical context so as to arrive at practical recommendations for the ‘here and now’. This volume examines the normative issues that become relevant when the non-ideal circumstances of the climate context are fully taken into account. It comprises three parts. The first collects chapters that reflect on general issues in responding to the shortcomings of current climate action. Chapters in the second part propose more specific practical reforms. The third part examines how moral values ought to be brought into the scientific, political, and public debates under the non-ideal circumstances of this world.Less

Climate Justice in a Non-Ideal World

Published in print: 2016-06-01

Climate change confronts humanity with a challenge it has never faced before. It combines issues of global justice and intergenerational justice on an unprecedented scale. In particular, it stands to adversely affect the global poor. So far, the global community has failed to reduce emissions to levels that are necessary to avoid unacceptable risks for the future. Nor are the burdens of emission reductions and of coping with climate impacts fairly shared. The shortcomings of both political and individual climate action thus seem like a paradigmatic case for non-ideal theory. Non-ideal theory can be understood as a form of political theorizing that compares different responses to (i) failures of agents to comply with the demands of justice and (ii) unfavourable circumstances. Insofar as non-ideal theory also aims to be action-guiding, it asks normative theorists for a more thorough engagement with the empirical context so as to arrive at practical recommendations for the ‘here and now’. This volume examines the normative issues that become relevant when the non-ideal circumstances of the climate context are fully taken into account. It comprises three parts. The first collects chapters that reflect on general issues in responding to the shortcomings of current climate action. Chapters in the second part propose more specific practical reforms. The third part examines how moral values ought to be brought into the scientific, political, and public debates under the non-ideal circumstances of this world.

In times of climate change and public debt, a concern for intergenerational justice should lead us to have a closer look at theories of intergenerational justice. It should also press us to come up ...
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In times of climate change and public debt, a concern for intergenerational justice should lead us to have a closer look at theories of intergenerational justice. It should also press us to come up with institutional design proposals to change the decision-making world that surrounds us. This book focuses on institutional proposals aimed at taking the interests of future generations more seriously. It does so from the perspective of applied political philosophy, being explicit about the underlying normative choices and open to the latest developments in the social sciences. It provides citizens, activists, firms, charities, public authorities, policy-analysts, students, and academics with the body of knowledge necessary to understand what out institutional options are and what they entail if we are concerned about today’s excessive short-termism. After two introductory chapters, four general chapters provide analytical tools needed to look at any type of future-sensitive institutional proposal. This part includes chapters on theories of intergenerational justice, on approaches to measuring intergenerational transfers, on whether claiming to represent future generations or invoking violations of generational sovereignty can make sense. The rest of the book includes eighteen chapters, each of them focusing on a specific proposal. Eight proposals are about future-focused institutions, i.e. bodies for which rendering policy more future-oriented is the main or exclusive purpose. The other ten chapters consider various ways in which institutions that are not specialized in future-oriented policy can nevertheless become more future-sensitive.Less

Institutions For Future Generations

Published in print: 2016-12-22

In times of climate change and public debt, a concern for intergenerational justice should lead us to have a closer look at theories of intergenerational justice. It should also press us to come up with institutional design proposals to change the decision-making world that surrounds us. This book focuses on institutional proposals aimed at taking the interests of future generations more seriously. It does so from the perspective of applied political philosophy, being explicit about the underlying normative choices and open to the latest developments in the social sciences. It provides citizens, activists, firms, charities, public authorities, policy-analysts, students, and academics with the body of knowledge necessary to understand what out institutional options are and what they entail if we are concerned about today’s excessive short-termism. After two introductory chapters, four general chapters provide analytical tools needed to look at any type of future-sensitive institutional proposal. This part includes chapters on theories of intergenerational justice, on approaches to measuring intergenerational transfers, on whether claiming to represent future generations or invoking violations of generational sovereignty can make sense. The rest of the book includes eighteen chapters, each of them focusing on a specific proposal. Eight proposals are about future-focused institutions, i.e. bodies for which rendering policy more future-oriented is the main or exclusive purpose. The other ten chapters consider various ways in which institutions that are not specialized in future-oriented policy can nevertheless become more future-sensitive.